Steinbeck Country

   John Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas has served as the setting for several of his novels and has strongly influenced his works.  Since the late 1860s Salinas has been an important agricultural city in California located in the heart of the state’s farm country.  The Salinas Valley currently grows more lettuce then any other area in the U.S. and is known as “America’s Salad Bowl” reflecting the intense sense of identity in the area centered on agriculture.  Visiting the area, it is not hard to see why Steinbeck set the majority of his stories in the agriculture business.  He definitely wrote about what he knew.
   Though the commerce of the area has not changed since the time of Steinbeck, the culture of the area seems to have.  Today Salinas has one of the highest murder rates in the country, four times the national average.  Economic hardship plagues the area with the divide between rich and poor that Steinbeck illustrates in his writings still very much an issue.